It is not possible accurately to date Robert Henryson's The
Testament of Cresseid but it is thought to have been written
before the early 1490s. Henryson's working lifetime spanned the
years 1450 to 1505 and the reigns of James II (1437-60), James III
(1460-1488) and James IV (1488-1513). Politically, these were turbulent
times. All three kings inherited the crown in their minorities:
James II after the murder of his father; James III after the untimely
explosion of a cannon killed his father; and James IV, after the
unexplained slaying of his father following the battle of Sauchieburn,
against rebels nominally headed by the fifteen year old heir.

During this period the machinery of the state was symbolised by,
and centred on, the person of the monarch and his government. He
governed through a council, made up principally of selected nobility
and clergy, which issued edicts in the Crown's name. A Parliament
made up of the 'Three Estates' - the clergy, nobility and burgesses
- was called with differing degrees of regularity; but at this time
it had little more power than to rubberstamp Crown ordinances as
Parliamentary Acts, and very occasionally to limit the more unpopular
of the King's demands. The overriding characteristic of kingship
during Henryson's lifetime was the Stewart dynasty's preoccupation
with establishing and developing its authority throughout the kingdom,
generally with the aid of the nobility and clergy, but with intermittent
confrontation with specific groups.

Henryson's early working life will have been influenced, in particular,
by the political unrest occasioned by the unpopularity of James
Ixia's reign. This stemmed in part from James's own personal lack
of charisma; but also from increasing tension between a nobility,
increasingly alienated by taxation demands and lack of involvement
in government, and a king determined to promote royal power through
more centralised, bureaucratic government. The simmering discontent
surfaced in 1482, after an English-aided invasion by James's brother,
the duke of Albany, and a coup by three of his half-uncles, resulted
in the temporary imprisonment of the king in Edinburgh castle and
the hanging at Lauder Bridge of his closest advisors. Although James
III was to recover power until his overthrow and death in 1488,
these were the uncertain times forming the backdrop to Henryson's
writing.

James IV's reign, has been deemed far more successful by historians.
He further promoted the image of a glorious Stewart dynasty, synonymous
with kingship in Scotland. His increasingly centralised government
was able to exert its authority throughout the kingdom, and to fund
the enlarged crown expenditure on the navy, palaces and a glittering
court life. Much of this was not that different from the policies
of James III, but, unlike his father, James IV succeeded in doing
this without alienating the nobility, retaining their support by
involving them in government and the spectacle of the court. Royal
finances were improved, again through much the same means as before,
the systematic exploitation of Crown lands and a persistent manipulation
of church revenues, through direct clerical taxation and the use
of the revenues resulting from ecclesiastical vacancies.

It is within James's reinvigorated Renaissance court, that the
arts were encouraged - and poets such as Henryson, and those that
followed like William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas thrived. James IV's
status as a player within the continental monarchical elite was
confirmed by his marriage in 1503 to Margaret, daughter of Henry
VII of England and sister of Henry VIII-to-be. Though the Treaty
of Perpetual Peace agreed at this time by James and Henry did not
result in unalloyed tranquility, this marital union of the houses
of Stewart and Tudor was eventually to provide an heir to the united
crowns of Scotland and England, in the person of James VI in 1603.
However this must have seemed very unlikely in the dark days that
followed the deaths of James IV, many of his nobility and as many
as 5000 men at Flodden in 1513, following the resumption of Anglo-Scottish
hostilities.

The early years of James V's reign were dominated by conflict between
various nobles and his mother, the dowager Queen Margaret, over
the regency during James's minority. The heir-presumptive, James's
cousin the Duke of Albany, made occasional visits from France where
he was chiefly resident, but the royal government and the person
of James himself was eventually grasped by the Earl of Angus until
1528, when James escaped and began his personal rule.

He continued much of his father's work, in particular, the pursuit
of the finance necessary to fund the lavish building projects at
Stirling, Falkland and Linlithgow. Through a ruthless exploitation
of church revenues and the lucky windfall of two substantial French
dowries, James V was able to finance his ambitions without alienating
the nobility. His court continued as a vibrant centre of culture.
Sir David Lindsay, royal herald, occasional ambassador, and author
of Ane Satire of the Three Estates was the chief poet. He
was also able to continue the pattern of the centralisation of justice
and administration that had marked the reign of his father; in 1532
he founded the College of Justice (or Court of Session).

One of the constant features of James V's reign however was the
state of Anglo-Scottish relations. Latent hostility over Henry VIII's
claims to overlordship over the Scottish crown and his nephew James,
often blossomed into overt hostility. In 1524, the earl of Surrey's
invasion reached Edinburgh temporarily. A number of truces were
signed, but in 1542 hostilities broke out again on the Borders,
leading to the English defeat of a Scottish force at Solway Moss,
on the south-western border. James's daughter and heir Mary was
born a few days later and just days before his own early death.

Following the English victory at Solway Moss and James V's death,
Henry VIII was keen to secure this triumph with an agreement to
the marriage of his son Edward (Edward VI, 1547-1553) to the new
Scottish Queen, Mary, when she was ten. In July 1543, the two treaties
of Greenwich were agreed between England and Scotland for the marriage
and future peace. However, a complicated political picture back
home in Scotland, as various factions manoeuvered for control of
the infant Queen and government, resulted in the Scottish Parliament
rejecting the treaties with England in the autumn of 1543.

Henry VIII was enraged. Cross border raiding escalated and in 1544,
Henry resurrected the overlordship claims of Edward I. English armies
under the command of the Earl of Hertford (later Duke of Somerset)
assaulted Edinburgh and ravaged the Scottish borders, forcing thousands
of Scotsmen in Berwickshire, Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire to 'take
assurance' with the English, swearing allegiance to the English
crown in return for the protection of their lands from English attack
and Scottish reprisals.

This English 'pale' of influence was further consolidated during
the second stage of the Rough Wooing, as a full scale invasion of
Scotland up the east coast took place and Somerset established a
chain of fortresses within Scotland under English command as far
north as Broughty Ferry, near Dundee. In September 1547, the Scottish
suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Pinkie, and the English
established a military command at Haddington. The English, however,
were unable to take Edinburgh castle or to progress further north
or west. Following the Anglo-French agreement to the marriage of
Mary to the Dauphin, son of Henri II, and the removal of Mary to
France in 1548, the English campaign faltered. Faced with regional
revolts in both East Anglia and in Devon and Cornwall in 1549, English
garrisons were abandoned later in that year and peace treaties signed
between France and England in 1550 and Scotland and England in 1551.

Mary's youth was spent at the court of Henri II of France following
the agreement of her marriage to the Dauphin in 1548. In Scotland,
the regency was initially held by Mary's cousin the earl of Arran,
but in 1554, her mother Mary of Guise took over power. These were
the years leading up to the Reformation. Increasing support for
reform eventually found voice in the riots incited by John Knox
in Perth in May 1559, and in the overthrow of the regency by the
Lords of Congregation that October. Mary de Guise died in June 1560,
and the Reformation Parliament agreeing the basis of Protestant
reform took place two months later.

Mary, briefly Queen of France from 1559, was widowed in December
1560 and in August 1561 returned to Scotland. Scotland in 1561,
in the early stages of the consolidation of the Reformation, was
a changed place politically. The 'auld alliance' with France was
finally over and increasingly the nobility looked to the Protestant
England of Elizabeth I for support. Mary's difficulties as a Catholic
monarch and female ruler in an increasingly Protestant country slowly
multiplied. Her marriage in 1565 to a cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord
Darnley, of Scots parentage but brought up in England, ensured the
independence of the Scottish throne from any outside influence and
produced an heir, James, in June 1566. It ended, however, in the
confusion which surrounded his murder early in 1567.

This disaster was compounded by Mary's marriage, three months later
to one of those implicated in the murder, the earl of Bothwell.
The Scottish nobility could not accept this and confronted Mary
and Bothwell at Carberry, near Musselburgh, in June 1567. Mary was
imprisoned at Loch Leven castle and forced to abdicate a month later
in favour of James. She escaped in 1568, rallying considerable military
support, but was defeated by the earl of Moray's forces at Langside
near Glasgow. Forced to flee into England, she remained in captivity
there until her execution in 1587. The years following her abdication
saw Scotland riven by civil war until 1573.

But against this background of political turbulence, Mary's sophisticated
court was for several years a glittering centre of Renaissance culture,
in the style of her grandfather, James IV. A new sense of patriotism
flourished and there was an explosion of verse in Scots and Latin.
The Bannatyne Manuscript, a large collection of vernacular verse
was compiled by an Edinburgh scribe, George Bannatyne, probably
in 1565-6 - at a time appropriate to the large amount of love poetry
which it contained - rather than, as the compiler claimed in 1568,
'in time of pest' [plague], by which time he had to contend with
the censorship of a new Protestant regime brought to power after
Mary's fall. The collection included all of Henryson's Fables
except for the The Fox, the Wolf and the Cadger, and it also
had unique copies of other works in Middle Scots, by various late
medieval poets. Bannatyne was part of a wider literary circle, based
in the capital and including lawyers, crown officials and wealthy
merchants. Its aim was twofold: to preserve as much as possible
of the literary heritage of Middle Scots in an age which targeted
much of that inheritance as 'idolatry'; and to seek the moral reformation
of society - the 'commonweal' defined and defended by Lindsay in
his Satire of the Three Estates - based on the aims of Christian
or Erasmian humanism.

James VI was only a year old when he was crowned at Stirling in
1567. Scottish politics in his early years were dominated by a succession
of powerful regents. Though these regents indulged in factional
rivalry, they consistently pursued the policy of extension and consolidation
of royal authority and administration of justice of previous Stewart
kings. When James finally began his personal rule in 1585, he was
to continue this policy relentlessly. His status and power was further
established following the formal alliance with England in 1586 (and
despite the execution of his mother in 1587) and the tacit understanding
of his succession to the English throne on Elizabeth's death. He
determinedly pursued his legislation through Parliament, reining
in the powers of the Kirk, legislating against feuding and enforcing
judicial authority against disorder in the Highlands and Isles and
the Borders.

He was a 'thinking' King, much given to theological discussion,
and a poet of some note. His views on kingship found expression
in 1598, with the writing of his advice on kingship to his son in
the Basilicon Doron. Despite the autocratic views, and justification
of his kingship through divine right, that the Basilicon
voiced, his court was a honeypot for debate and culture, attracting
a large circle of poets. In the 1580s, the self-styled 'Castilian
Band' of poets, led by Alexander Montgomerie, claimed centre stage
in this flourishing Renaissance court, although almost none of their
work was actually published at this time. And it was in this period,
too, that the printing press began to facilitate an explosion in
the publication of a huge breadth of literature, philosophical and
theological l debate, tracts on kingship and union and patriotic
histories. James VI appointed a Royal Printer in 1590, an Englishman
Robert Waldegrave, who was responsible for the publication of Basilicon
Doron in 1599.

It is against this background that The Fables appeared in
a printed edition in 1570, produced by the major Scottish printer-publisher
of the sixteenth century, Henry Charteris. Charteris was responsible
for the publication of a huge body of Scottish work, including that
of Sir David Lindsay (Ane Satire of the Three Estates) and
James VI's stern tutor, George Buchanan (De Jure Regni).
In 1571, The Fables appeared in print again thanks to the
Edinburgh bookseller, Thomas Bassandyne. The first surviving printed
edition of The Wallace and of John Barbour's epic romance,
The Brus, also belongs to this same period 1570-71.The earliest
surviving Scottish print of The Testament of Cresseid was by Charteris
in 1593. When Charteris died in 1599, 554 copies of the Testament
were listed in his inventory, alongside such Scottish patriotic
poetry as Blind Harry's fifteenth century epic, The Wallace.
It is worth noting that works like these - the classics of late
medieval Middle Scots - figure far more, and in far greater numbers,
in surviving bookseller's inventories of the alter sixteenth century
than the works of contemporary poets, including those of the Castalian
Band.

In 1603, Elizabeth I died and James VI was proclaimed James I of
England. He progressed slowly south to London and was to return
only once to Scotland, in 1617. His hopes for the full political
Union of Scotland and England were rejected by the English Parliament
in 1607. In Scotland, the cultural scene continued to be characterized
by its patriotic fervour, with a new consciousness of, and pride
in, Scotland as a nation. It was a pattern set for the rest of the
seventeenth century.

The Medieval church in mid to late fifteen-century Scotland played
a central role in government and political, social and cultural
life. The church and the Crown were intertwined and generally acted
cohesively. The church was represented in Parliament as one of the
three Estates, most of the emerging bureaucracy was drawn from the
ranks of the clergy and bishops and other highly placed clerics
were prominent in the king's council. Dispute did arise over the
supra-national loyalty of the Church to Rome, whose authority the
Crown challenged periodically and successive Stewart kings from
James I (1406-37) onwards tried to harness Church funds and patronage
for their own use. Essentially, however, the characteristic of the
period is of Crown and Church, hand in hand.

The influence of the Church permeated throughout Scottish life.
The Church was the wealthiest institution in Scotland and still
the biggest landowner. Much of Scots law was based on canon - or
ecclesiastical - law. Most of the notaries still had a clerical
background, though this was fast changing, and Church courts administered
justice within their jurisdictions. By the time of the foundation
of the Court of Session in 1532, perhaps 50 per cent of all notaries
were laymen, and this was reflected in the fact that the new central
Court was staffed by judges drawn equally from the clergy and the
laity.

Almost all education was provided by the Church from school to
university level. The three universities founded in the fifteenth
century were all had bishops as their patrons and Chancellors: St
Andrews in 1413, Glasgow in 1451 and Aberdeen in 1495. The clergy
were the great historians, scholars and writers of the time. Andrew
Wyntoun and Walter Bower, authors of two of the most notable Chronicles
of Scottish history, were in religious orders.

The diocese of St Andrews was the foremost within the Scottish
church. It was the wealthiest diocese and one of the greatest centres
of learning; its bishops were always closely involved in national
government. In 1472 this primacy was confirmed by the erection of
the archbishopric of St Andrews, over twenty years before that of
Glasgow.

At the time of Henryson's writing therefore, the Church was a buoyant,
powerful institution, a dominant influence in both the national
and daily life of Scotland. Henryson himself was of course educated
by the clergy and is thought to have taught at a grammar school
attached to the Benedictine abbey at Dunfermline.

The Reformation in Scotland got off to a slow start, with the initial
small rumblings in the 1520s and 1530s not achieving their objective
until 1560. James V resisted the example of Henry VIII's dissolution
of the monasteries in the 1530s. The spread of Lutheranism and later,
by Calvinism, on the Continent did not greatly impact in Scotland
for some time. It was not until the 1540s, that the volume of calls
for reform began to increase.

In 1546, George Wishart, who has spent time as a radical Protestant
preacher in England, was burned at the stake in St Andrews, after
a show trial which brought him into direct conflict with David Beaton,
Archbishop of St Andrews. Beaton was himself murdered shortly afterwards,
which resulted in the Reformers, including John Knox holding out
against the Crown in St Andrews castle until it was stormed by the
French in 1547. Knox was carted off to the galleys in the French
navy. But throughout the regency of the overtly Catholic Mary of
Guise in the 1550s, reforming sympathies began to take hold, for
example amongst the lairds of Angus and the Mearns and also amongst
the nobility, partly because reform well-suited their anti-French
political ambitions.

By the time of the return of John Knox in 1559, a political alliance,
calling themselves the 'Lords of the Congregation', had come into
being, although the two had an uneasy relationship. Knox incited
a riot at Perth in May 1559, and in October the Lords entered Edinburgh
and overthrew the regency of Mary de Guise. By then, however, the
main campaign of the Lords was against the 'thralldom of strangers'
(the French) and not overtly a religious crusade. In early 1560
the Lords received English support, forcing Mary to withdraw into
Edinburgh castle, where she died in June 1560. The Treaty of Edinburgh
in July 1560 agreed for the speedy removal of both English and French
troops. The so-called Reformation Parliament met a month later,
although it was illegal because it met without the permission of
the monarch.

The Reformation Parliament of 1560 drew up the legislation that
was to be the foundation of the Reformed Church in Scotland. The
Catholic Mass was proscribed, the jurisdiction of the papacy abolished
and a Protestant Confession of Faith, drawn up by John Knox, adopted.
The first draft of the First Book of Discipline to codify
the practices of the Reformed Church was drawn up under Knox, but
was rejected by the Lords. A second draft was presented to a convention
of nobility which met late in the same year but was not approved
by this body, only by some of the individuals present. All this
legislation, however, was not ratified until 1567, after the fall
of Mary. Thus the Reformation took some years to consolidate and
for the reality of it to be felt in the organization of the Kirk
throughout Scotland.

The organization and practices of the Reformed Kirk differed dramatically
to that of the medieval Catholic Church. The abbeys and monastic
orders disappeared and the organization of the Catholic church was
replaced by a new system, based on a series of church courts. At
a local level, based in parishes, were the kirk sessions which included
the local minister (who had replaced the priest), elders and deacons,
the prominent members of local society.

The Presbyteries were the next level up, consisting of the ministers
of ten to twenty local parishes meeting regularly. Some lay elders
also attended, but only in their very early years. These were established
almost a generation later, from 1581 onwards. By 1637, there were
60 of them meeting regularly. The Presbyteries were overseen by
the twice yearly meetings of the Synods, which covered a larger
administrative area. At a national level was the General Assembly,
which came into being in 1560 as an assembly of the kirk of 'this
haill realme'. This assembly represented the voice of the whole
kirk in its negotiations in particular with James VI. It initially
met twice a year, but after 1596 where and when it met came increasingly
to be controlled by the crown. It met only six more times between
1603 and the beginning of the Covenanting Revolution in 1637.

Religious practice was completely changed and codified in a series
of new prayer books and catechisms: in 1562, the Genevan Book
of Common Order was adopted by the General Assembly and Calvin's
Catechism became the main manual of religious teaching. The
sermon and singing of psalms in church became the important aspects
of the service, whilst the walls of the kirks were stripped of anything
tainted with 'idolatry'. The plantation of the ministry throughout
Scotland was an uneven and slow process. On average, there was one
parish to every four parishes throughout the 1560s and 1570s. As
late as the 1590s there were still some parishes in the Lowlands
without ministers. But slowly and steadily change did take place
and over the next three or four generations, the establishment of
the Reformation was consolidated.

Whilst James VI was a committed Protestant, he was also a King
with a firm idea of his absolute authority within his kingdom. It
was over the challenge presented to this authority by the kirk,
that the two came into dispute. His own tutor, George Buchanan,
and Andrew Melville, leading figure in the church in the generation
after Knox, both proclaimed the superiority of the church's jurisdiction
in everything, even over the king himself - a view sharply at odds
with James's own.

In 1584, Parliament, on James's behalf, legislated that all estates,
including the kirk, were subject to the authority of the Crown;
these were the so-called 'Black Acts'. This forced a number into
exile in England, with the remaining ministers forced to subscribe
the Black Acts. Despite the slight tempering nature of the 'Golden
Act' of 1592, which recognised the existence of the various church
courts, in fact this legislation only tightened the grip of the
crown over the Kirk, by permitting the king to fix when and where
the general assembly met.

The most contentious issue between James and the Kirk was over
the re-establishment of episcopacy. Although, 'parliamentary bishops'
had been appointed in 1600, James and his right hand man in the
Scottish church, John Spottiswoode, Archbishop of Glasgow from 1603,
were determined to re-establish the full judicial power of the episcopacy.
In the face of heavy opposition from the General Assemblies of 1606
and 1608, the Scottish Parliament of 1606 passed the Act for 'the
restitution of bishops' and that of 1609 restored bishops to certain
jurisdictions. The General Assembly of 1610 approved these Acts.
In 1610, a Court of High Commission was established in each archbishopric,
and in 1615 these were united into one.

Encouraged by this success, James pursued his ambition of conformity
of practice of worship and the liturgy. These 'Five Articles' prescribing
private baptism, private communion, confirmation by bishops, kneeling
at communion and holy days, were rejected initially by the General
Assembly in 1617, but forced through the Assembly in 1618. A reluctant
Parliament was pressured to give them legal status in 1621.

Despite this conflict, James VI was responsible in a major way
for the successful consolidation of the establishment of the Reformation
Church - and in a very visible and lasting way, by his commissioning
of the first authorized English translation of the Bible, published
in 1611 and still in use today.

The Oxford Companion to Scottish History edited by M Lynch
(2001)Scotland: A New History by M Lynch (1991)Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland, 1470-1625 by J Wormald
(1981)

James II by C McGladdery (1990)James III by N MacDougall (1982)James IV by N Macdougall (1989)James V: The Personal Rule, 1528-1542 by J Cameron (1998)Princelie Majestie: The Court of James V of Scotland, 1528-1542
by A Thomas (2001)Scotland: James V to James VII by G Donaldson (1965)The Reign of James VI edited by J Goodare and M Lynch (2000)

'The Bannatyne Manuscript: a Marian anthology' by AA MacDonald
in Innes Review xxxvii (1986)The Circle of John Mair: Logic and Logicians in Pre-Reformation
Scotland by A. Broadie (1985)Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland by C. Edington
(1995)King James VI and I, Political Writings, edited by JP Sommerville
(1994)Longer Scottish Poems, 1375-1650, vol.1, edited by P Bawcutt
and F Riddy (1987)Scottish Royal Palaces: The Architecture of the Royal Residences
during the Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Periods by JG
Dunbar (1999)Song, Dance and Poetry at the Court of King James VI by H.M.
Shire (1969)